


The Red Die

by charybdis



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Kink Meme, M/M, Other, prime numbers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-06
Updated: 2010-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:18:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charybdis/pseuds/charybdis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To Eames, numbers are addresses, odds, a ring size and a birthday; it's no wonder he doesn't understand how Arthur's mind works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Die

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING FOR DUB-CON: Contains one minor scene of suprise!het sex. It's consensual sex, and hey, that's maybe something you should expect when doing it in dreams with a forger... but! It's essentially an unexpected change in parameters without previous consent -- which is dub-con, at best.

_**I. Background Check** _

It's only been a year since Dom Cobb brought him into the world of extraction, but it comes naturally enough that he's started looking into taking some freelance work on the side.

Through a complex system of cryptic offers in back rooms of casinos and high-stakes poker rounds, 'freelance work' somehow translates to being kissed against the door of a suite in the Hotel de Paris, letting a man who claims to be the best forger in the business press a thigh against his crotch and a hand around the small of his back.

This Eames has to be good, Arthur thinks as he shrugs out of his jacket and reaches for his tie. They've barely met and he's managed to con Arthur into bed with him.

Arthur memorizes the way Eames smiles and every word out of his mouth is a challenge, and invitation to unravel countless layers of deception. He takes note of the way Eames arches and pants beneath him, the way he comes with a shout when Arthur leans forward and bites a red mark into the curve between his neck and shoulder, responding to _come catch me_ with _I've got you_.

Hours later, he wakes to find his left arm and shoulder numb, trapped under the weight of a sleeping Eames.

The morning sunlight warms his skin and the red die comes up one, one, one. Arthur smiles.

 

_**II. The Dream** _

The amount of sex they have with each other is almost appalling. When they're not on a job, they find a place, fuck themselves to exhaustion, hook up the PASIV and repeat the process in dreams.

The first time Eames thought it would be amusing to attempt forgery while Arthur was fucking him, he picked a busty brunette and changed over just as Arthur reached between them for his cock.

In retrospect, he was probably expecting Arthur to freak out, expecting another victory in his eternal campaign of make-Arthur-flinch.

But when Arthur's hand met the soft flesh of his stomach instead of a hard cock, he just slid his hand a little farther down, thumbed Eames's clit and pushed a finger into his pussy, and Eames came right off the bed, yowling in surprise and approval.

Even that first time, Arthur caught the way Eames's forgery slipped at the peak of orgasm, a flash of clear, blue-green eyes and the stuttering outline of full lips, truth accidentally revealed.

This time, he waits for Eames to slip into the stillness that indicates true, dreamless sleep before he gently disentangles himself and gets out of bed.

He slips out of the room, takes the elevator to the top floor and then finds the stairs to the roof.

The red die comes up two, five, three, and Arthur takes the direct route to the street.

Four seconds of rushing air and gravity is almost as exhilarating as orgasm.

He wakes up quietly, without that unprofessional jerk that so many dreamers exhibit in response to violent death. Next to him, Eames sleeps the sleep of the well-fucked, lax and pliant. Arthur tucks him a little closer into his shoulder, inhales in the salt-sex-smoke scent of his hair and watches him breathe deep and even.

When Eames sleeps, he is almost unrecognizable. Sly eyes closed and lying mouth silent, he's more foreign to Arthur than any of the thousand men and women he wears when they fuck. More foreign, and more beloved.

Arthur always dreams of paradoxes.

 

_**III. Extraction** _

At his core, Eames is a con man -- he can call himself a reality smith, a forger, an artist, but he lives for the con, for the rush of selling a great big lie and _getting away with it_. The bigger the lie, the better the rush. He makes promises for the sole purpose of breaking them.

And one day, he's going to do it to Arthur.

It won't be malicious -- Eames isn't malicious except to people who've done something to deserve it -- but it's inevitable; it's in his nature.

So Arthur ends it.

The next time they slip into a dream together, he tells Eames that they're done. He doesn't think it necessary to elaborate -- it's relatively clear to him that it's just a game to Eames.

Except for the way Eames stares at him, silent and flushed, instead of laughing it off like he's meant to. He turns on his heel and slams out the door, wordless.

Arthur sits on the bed and waits for Eames to come back. He doesn't.

The red die comes up two, five- Arthur decides that's good enough, and eats a bullet.

He's reaching for his jacket when Eames wakes up and tackles him straight to the floor. For a second, it's like some sick mirror of the first time, Arthur pinned because he wants to be, wants to stay and stay and never leave, except this time it _hurts_. Now he knows what love means, he knows who Eames is, and he wants to stay more than ever, but he _can't_ watch Eames walk away, needs to keep this on his own terms.

"You complete _arse_ ," Eames snarls. His fingers wrap around Arthur's neck, clumsy with rage, and all it would take to break free is the heel of Arthur's hand to his face, so quick, so efficient, but instead Arthur closes his eyes and thinks, _Two, five three_. Loud enough in his mind that he can hardly hear Eames choking out more words, "- think I'm too dense to get the message, unless I come back to Rorschach on the headboard, all done in brains and blood? Just to rub it in. You absolute _fuck_."

Arthur leaves it until his vision starts to go grey around the edges (it's rational to want this to last -- Eames will probably never lay a hand on him again) before he lashes out and rolls away, retrieving his jacket and shrugging into it while Eames presses a hand to his bleeding nose.

"We're done."

And as far as Arthur is concerned, that is that.

Afterward, he is no longer allowed in Eames's dreams. At first it seems like petty spite, but when, in a fit of exasperation, he demands a reason, Eames says, "My dear, they're all going to want to kill you straight off, aren't they?" like it's the most obvious thing in the world for his projections to hate even the sight of Arthur.

Arthur stops indulging in dreams outside of the job -- all of his projections are a thousand different faces on the same damn person.

It makes the Inception job a very special kind of hell, and Arthur can feel his focus slipping through his fingers. He overlooks the telltale euphemisms for anti-extraction training in Fischer's history. Lets Eames's blonde girl wind him up enough that he kisses Ariadne in a hotel lobby full of hostile projections. Gets so flustered that he scrambles for a handgun -- _a fucking handgun_ \-- while he's wrestling with a security projection.

He hasn't reached for a gun in a fistfight since he was fourteen and too inexperienced to know better.

The red die comes up one, one, one, and Arthur wonders how this nightmare became his life.

 

_**IV. The Kick** _

The red die comes up one, one, one, clattering hollowly in the empty airport bathroom.

This is his last chance. In four hours, Eames will be on a flight to Taipei, going to ground the way he always does after a job, staying down until he gambles most of his take away. Given the size of the take this time, he might never resurface.

Arthur slips his totem back into his pocket and tells is reflection that this is better than the alternative. And it's always easier when he isn't actually working with Eames. If he thinks it often enough, he will eventually believe it. _This will get easier. I will forget._

Instead, Eames's voice slides up behind him, reflection appearing at Arthur's shoulder in the mirror. "Why two-five-three? I've always wondered."

In his mind's eye, the die comes up two, five, three, and the mirror becomes a window and Arthur slips out like his last chance, going up in smoke.

It strikes Arthur then, how closely Eames must have been watching -- even if he managed to steal the die and roll it himself, he'd have to be intimately attuned to where Arthur's attention was at any given moment.

"Is it some kind of code? An address or an apartment number, perhaps?"

This is what Eames does; he talks and cons and, outside of calculating odds, he's terrible at math. Of course he doesn't know.

 _It takes approximately four seconds for a man to hit the street from a height of twenty stories,_ Arthur thinks. _That's some kick, huh?_

Maybe this time, he's going to wake up.

He says, "Two, five, three. Prime numbers. Indivisible." That's the secret that's inside of him. Indivisible. Explode a building, you get constituent atoms, explode a number, you get prime factors.

Explode Arthur and, apparently, you get paradoxical love and a ribbon of _no no no no no no no_ spelling out acquiescence in silent loops.

He turns, and he's never seen the look that Eames is giving him before -- serious and considering, making no attempt to hide the fact of his evaluation. Until suddenly, that look is eclipsed by one even more unfamiliar -- pure awe.

"You utter _wanker_." Eames breathes. "The things I could do to you, knowing that. That die will never work again, in my dreams."

Arthur thinks, _I know, I know, I love you_. He says, "Maybe," and watches Eames work out the other half of the question -- why that sequence? But instead of asking, he throws something at Arthur's head, typically irreverent.

Arthur snatches it easily out of the air, opens his mouth to snap at Eames, and then stops, arrested by the object in his hand. A poker chip. Eames's totem.

Eames smiles when he looks up, _come catch me_. And Arthur steps off twenty stories onto thin air, riding the kick to a new reality.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Inception kink meme prompt: Arthur loves Eames, but he knows how Eames is and knows Eames will only break his heart. So he ends it before Eames can do it for him. It is only after that he realizes that by ending it, even on his terms, he broke his heart twice as hard as he thought Eames would have.


End file.
